


What Lies Within

by AsheRhyder



Series: More Than True [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, M/M, except not really fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 07:27:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8047681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsheRhyder/pseuds/AsheRhyder
Summary: A beast lives in Hanzo's skin. It devours anything that comes its way: a glance, a nod of the head, a friendly word, the gentle brush of a hand. Anything Jesse McCree gives him, it desires.And McCree feeds it. Constantly.This wouldn't be as big of a problem if McCree didn't get himself shot just before a building falls on their heads.





	What Lies Within

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chibimono](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibimono/gifts).



> Carries continuity from "What Lies Untold", but more importantly from "What Lies Beneath". Read that first to avoid confusion.

    A beast lives in Hanzo’s skin. Unlike the family dragons, this one is all his own making: fed and fattened on grief, guilt and rage. He let it rule him for so many years that there are still days — rarer now, but still — when he wakes in the morning and is startled by the freedom of his own shape. The beast is trapped now, no longer the trap, but it still waits and writhes deep inside him. He put too much of himself into it to ever be able to destroy it.

      
    The beast changes as Hanzo heals. Its hunger, once self-sustaining, turns to other tastes. It devours anything that comes its way: a glance, a nod of the head, a friendly word, the gentle brush of a hand. Anything Jesse McCree gives him, it desires.

    And McCree feeds it. Constantly. The cowboy offers enough to glut a lesser creature, but the beast is insatiable and every morsel only makes the cravings sharper. It reminds Hanzo of the clumsy monstrosities the westerners call dragons, the voracious, greedy beasts capable only of destructions and consumption.

  
    Mornings they share in the chaos of the communal kitchen, where McCree inelegantly makes tea for Hanzo alongside his own coffee. Hanzo tries to beat him there and make his tea himself, but no matter how early he rises, McCree is there first with an easy smile and a promise that “it’s no problem”. Somehow, Hanzo can’t bear to actually tell him to stop.

    Without a mission, they inevitably drift to the training rooms. Sometimes they spar against the bots, sometimes against each other. Hanzo is dismayed to find the beast hungers as much for the sight of McCree reloading mid-roll as it does for the warmth of the cowboy’s body against his when they attempt hand-to-hand combat.

    They drift apart in the afternoons and evenings, McCree to do whatever it is a cowboy does in his free time and Hanzo to continue his awkward and rocky reconciliation with his brother. Hanzo is trying to make amends to Genji, but it is exceptionally difficult when his victim has forgiven him before he’s absolved himself, and he’s often left unsure of how he should proceed. Also, Genji has developed a habit of attempting the most spectacularly unsubtle interrogation to see what Hanzo thinks of McCree, which has two terrible side effects.

    Firstly, it makes it impossible to keep Hanzo’s mind (and the beast’s hunger) off of Jesse McCree.

    Secondly, it usually annoys Hanzo to the point of lashing out, which he inevitably regrets. Worse, Genji apparently takes this as some kind of encouragement, as if even a negative response is some kind of progress for his brother.

    ( _It is_ , croons the beast wrapped around his heart. _It is_.)

  
    Missions are better. On missions, Hanzo can force himself to focus on the duty before him. There is a clear objective and a path laid out for him; if he deviates, it is for the sake of keeping to the objective, not because he lacks direction. The beast quiets, then, drowned out by the family dragons who run through him like a storm.

    At least until the mission where they run into Reaper.

  
    The Talon-associated mercenary has been on Winston’s radar since before the recall that resurrected Overwatch, but neither Hanzo nor McCree have encountered him yet. This changes when Winston sends them, Genji, Lúcio, and Hana to accompany Mei to a decommissioned research lab. The site, once focused on environmental studies and the potential applications of new plant species, now falls under scrutiny from all sides as rumors of a potential biohazard start cropping up. Mei’s task is to see if there’s anything salvageable from the original research, and the rest of them are to make sure there isn’t once she’s finished.

  
    To say the facility is unpleasant would be among the greatest understatements Hanzo has ever made. Thick, black, thorn-studded vines crawl over the walls, even digging into or outright through the stone in some places. The air smells sickly sweet, like a thousand decaying flowers, and feels sticky to the skin.

    Hanzo regrets his choice to wear traditional archery garb from the moment they see the place.

    “Wow, that is some Sleeping Beauty’s castle levels of landscaping there,” Lúcio whistles. He fiddles with his equipment, and a haunting song starts to play something breathy about dreams.

    “A little less with the soundtrack to this horror picture, if you please,” McCree winces, covering his mouth and nose with his serape. “I don’t know how you can stand this.”

    Hanzo realizes that the comment is addressed to him, and he flushes slightly.

    “There is no alternative,” he says, only to see McCree’s eyes sharpen on him. In one swift move, the cowboy whips off his iconic wrap and settles it around Hanzo’s shoulders. The smell of sun-warmed wool and smoke mute the floral aroma, and under the thrum of the dragons, the beast stirs.

    “McCree—“ he starts to object, but the cowboy hops back a step.

    “I know, I know, it’ll get in the way of your draw.” He says, and the heat in Hanzo’s abdomen flares to think that this man knows him well enough to allay his objections before he voices them. “Just keep it on for now. You can drop it if we run into trouble. I got my smokes, but I can’t see how anyone can breath this and not gag.” He gestures to their teammates. Genji has filters in his helmet and Hana’s MEKA, while not climate controlled, has built-in ventilation. Lúcio and Mei both have collars they pull up to protect themselves.

    McCree lights a cigarillo, and the smoke curls lazily around his face. Hanzo’s blood feels alight with fire.

    “Thank you,” he says. The beast purrs in pleasure.

    “Any time,” Jesse smiles, and Hanzo has the sense that it might not be hyperbole.

  
    Within half an hour, Hanzo is both blissfully grateful and miserably regretting the loan. The rafters of the facility will not, upon inspection, hold his weight, so he and Genji are both grounded among tall and overgrown glass cases they cannot climb either, stuck in the middle of the miasma. The serape cuts through the worst of it, but every breath of McCree’s sky-and-tobacco scent makes his heart pound and his skin itch as if the beast will burst forth again to claim what it desires. It makes Hanzo restless and snappish.

    “Progress?” He asks Mei brusquely. The little block of ice around her helps her deal with the air quality, but it also keeps the team from seeing the screens she reads.

    “Still looking,” she replies, her voice so gentle that a fresh strike of shame cuts into his temper.

    “My apologies,” he grunts. Genji makes some small motion that might be a nod of approval. Hanzo thinks he might be sick, serape or no.

  
    A sudden sound from the other side of the compound puts them all on high alert. Hanzo draws a sonic arrow and lets it fly, revealing a dozen figures closing in fast on their location.

    “We have company!” Lúcio warns Mei, hitting the play button and kicking out a beat.

    In the after-images of the sonic arrow, the opposing team’s leader pauses, gestures, and splits their unit into two flanking forces.

    “You want left or right?” McCree asks Genji with a savage grin and a spin of his pistol. Genji answers by ducking to the right, and McCree chuckles as he heads to the left. Hanzo scans again for any high ground that might support his weight and finds nothing. He mutters an irritated curse, shucks the serape, and settles for climbing atop Mei’s icy cubicle. He knocks an arrow and waits for any enemy with the temerity to come into his line of sight.

    The sound of gunfire fills the air, as terrible as the reek of rotting flowers. The spilled blood only makes the stench worse, layering and sharpening it to stab at base instincts. Lúcio’s music shakes the floor, sending fissures up Mei’s frozen fortress. Hanzo fires a scatter arrow down one side of the room and hears the flechettes hit home - not enough to kill, but enough for his brother to finish the job.

    “Incoming!” McCree’s shout is harsh with surprise - whatever he ran into, he wasn’t prepared.

  
    Nothing could have prepared Hanzo for the ghost that comes flying around the corner, and he was a dragon for ten years.

    The ghost is an unbound shadow and seems to glow like blacklight, all painful radiance just on the cusp of visibility. It’s hooded, with a white face like a skull, and it points two shotguns at Hanzo.

    “ **Die** ,” it says in a voice echoing from beyond the grave. Hanzo dives out of the way, but shotgun pellets skim past him, too close. He fires back, but the ghost shrugs it off — he’s too close, not getting enough draw on the bow, not getting enough _time_.

    A wild spray of bullets from behind draws the ghost’s attention away from Hanzo, and while it turns away Mei brings up another wall of ice. Hanzo scrambles around it, circles to the side as the ghost turns back and unleashes far too many shots into the barrier. The ice shatters, and Hanzo fires an arrow through the cascading shards. It hits the barrel of one gun, sending the next shot wide.

    The moment condenses, thick and heavy with inevitability. Hanzo, lining up another shot; Mei, trying to juggle the salvaged drive while reloading her endothermic blaster at the same time, and McCree, charging forward and luminous with rage twisting his features almost unrecognizable. Murderous intent tints his eyes crimson, and the very air around him seems to ripple like the haze of a desert summer.

    The ghost drops the shotguns it carries, reaches back, and draws two more.

    Time catches up, and everything happens almost at once.  

    Mei encases herself in a defensive cocoon.

    Hanzo fires, but the ghost’s shape is like smoke, a dozen different incarnations wrought in shadow and air as it fires wildly.

    McCree slides to a stop in front of Hanzo as soon as the arrow is past.

    “Draw!” he growls, and both he and the ghost pull their triggers at the same time.

  
    McCree is not a better shot than Hanzo. He is not stronger, or faster, or even tougher. What he is, simply put, is bigger. McCree is tall enough and broad enough that the shotgun blast hits him straight on, and none of it passes by or through to hit Hanzo.

      
    The beast howls.  
  
    McCree falls.  
      
    The ghost evaporates.

    Somewhere on Genji’s side of the building, something explodes. Mei’s armor falls apart, and she gasps at the chaos around her. The whole facility shakes. The walls groan, then buckle. Hanzo tries to grab McCree, but the man is dead weight. Mei starts towards him to help, but the ceiling above them cracks. Only the thorns suspend it, and their breaking fills the air.

    “Go! Get the data out!” Hanzo snaps at her, and whatever she sees in his eyes makes her flinch. She forms a wall of ice beside them as she retreats, for whatever good it will do.

  
    The thorns give way. The roof caves in. The vines drag the walls down with them. The first chunk of debris hits the ice wall and fractures it. The third shatters it.

    Hanzo, curled over McCree’s unconscious and bloody body, feels familiar lightning in his veins as the beast breaks free.  
    

    The weight of the world falls on him once again.  
    

* * *

  
  
    He wakes to darkness and pain so familiar that he wonders if the entire respite was nothing but a dream. The sun-and-summer-sky scent close to his face brings a jolt of memory, and he tries to sit up, but the crush of stone weighs too heavily on him, and fresh agony flickers down his spine.

    He remembers the collapsing facility.  
      
    He remembers the wrathful ghost.  
  
    He remembers McCree.  
  
    He cracks open an eye and tries to take stock of the situation. His body coils around McCree like the man is a treasure to be guarded — _he is_ , whispers the beast in Hanzo’s voice, _he is_ — protecting the man from the debris. Hanzo’s head is tucked close to the man, face pressed close without actually touching. McCree is bloody, but it looks like his armor stopped the ghost’s shotgun blast from being immediately fatal. The worrying thing is that the man does not wake up.

    “McCree,” he calls to him, more of a rasping whisper, really. His position compresses his lungs uncomfortably. “McCree, can you hear me?”

    No response.

    “McCree! _Jesse_!”

    Nothing.

    Hanzo falls silent and strains to hear the sound of the man’s breathing. It’s there, more labored than it should be, but there. He relaxes slightly, causing the wreckage to slide ominously. Hanzo lets his eyes roll over the awkward knot in which his body contorts, feels the weight of each piece of rubble that presses on him, and comes to a sinking realization: if he moves, McCree will be crushed.

    In the haze of pain, his thoughts begin to drift. The thorns embedded in the rocks on his back slip under his scales when he inhales too deeply, and he finds himself thinking of the story Lúcio mentioned. He can’t remember most of it, only fragments: a wall of thorns, a sleeping princess, a fierce dragon. How odd, he wonders, that such imagery has become his life.

    Something above them shifts, and one of the slabs slips down, jabbing into Hanzo’s side with a piece of rebar. He snarls. McCree does not stir.

    Sound drifts down through the wreckage.

    “Hanzo? Jesse?” Genji’s voice somehow sounds raw even through the vocal synthesizers. “Brother? Can you hear me?”

    Two warring thoughts consume Hanzo instantly: one, he cannot let Genji see what he’s become, and two, if McCree has not responded by now, he needs medical attention as fast as they can get it to him.

    “Hanzo! Jesse!” Genji calls again, more desperately. Hanzo can hear and feel the stones above them being moved, but there’s no way even D.Va’s MEKA can shift it all.

    “Genji, man, I don’t…” Lúcio says, some ways away. “I mean, I hope—“

    “My walls are not strong enough to hold this much,” says Mei in a small voice like an apology.

    “We Shimada are tougher than we seem,” Genji replies, grunting with the effort of tugging a new stone. “Brother! If you can hear me, answer me! Please!”

    Hanzo almost allows his shame to silence him, but the desperation in his brother’s voice reminds him of his own helpless call to McCree, and his heart constricts. Guilt pools in his gullet like liquid lead.

    “Here,” he says, and then has to fight for a deeper breath. “We are here!”

    Genji shouts his excitement in a mix of English and Japanese that makes no sense in either language. Mei and Lúcio speak softer under him, and Hanzo can’t tell what they say.

    “Hold on, brother! We’ll get you out!”

    “McCree needs medical attention,” Hanzo says, “and I am pinned. Please be careful.”  
  
    Minutes pass, measured in heartbeats and slow breaths. With every scrape of stone overhead, dread carves new trenches out of Hanzo’s heart. Not just his brother, but the whole team will see how he’s lost himself and what he fought so hard to keep hidden inside. Pieces above rasp and resettle, jarring his battered body with sharp edges and blunt force and keep his thoughts on his monstrous shape. Every twisted muscle burns with tension, every bone creaks with strain, but he holds strong.

    He has a treasure to protect.  
  
    At last, he feels a brush of cool air against his outermost scales.

    “Oh, Hanzo,” Genji’s voice is soft and filled with equal parts astonishment and sorrow. Hanzo wonders if dragons can weep.

    “It’s heavy,” he says instead. He feels a hand on his side, metal and synthetic, but he can’t flinch away. Somewhere behind and above Genji, the other team members whisper their surprise in their original languages.

    “All right, hold on. I can move this, and…” Genji trails off. “Brother, I fear this will hurt.”

    “Do what you must,” Hanzo hisses. “McCree needs your help more than I.”

    Genji, for once, doesn’t argue.

    Pain, sharp and new, shoots through Hanzo’s side as Genji drags away a piece of the debris covering them. A sliver of afternoon sunlight brightens the center of Hanzo’s coils for just an instant before Genji shimmies into the narrow space around McCree.

    Hanzo closes his eyes and tries not to think of the fairy tale Lúcio mentioned. From what he recalls of western stories, it never goes well for the dragon when the knight in shining armor shows up.

    Fabric rustles and metal clinks as Genji makes a quick check on McCree.

    “It looks like he hit his head when he fell,” Genji says, stepping closer to Hanzo’s head. “Are _you_ all right, brother?”

    Hanzo cannot answer for the storm of emotions churning in him. Genji’s hand brushes his whiskers, and he can’t help the shudder that ripples through him. It causes dust to rain on them, and Genji looks up, alarmed.

    “Get him out,” Hanzo growls. How different it is from the last time he and Jesse McCree were underneath a building! This time, he is not the one who needs saving.

    “Brother—“ Genji protests, even as he tries to lift McCree. The man’s height and broad build make him cumbersome to carry.

    “Go.” Hanzo turns his head just enough to help push Jesse into his brother’s grasp, breathing in one last lungful of the scent he has come to associate with freedom.

  
    McCree, of course, picks that moment to regain consciousness. His eyes flutter open, unfocused as they roll over Hanzo’s dragon shape. To Hanzo’s simultaneous surprise, mortification, and pleasure, Jesse recognizes him immediately.

    “Hanzo…” he groans, and Hanzo flinches back. Genji, eternally a pain in his brother’s side not unlike the actual thorns digging into his flesh, allows McCree to reach out for him. Jesse’s hands easily find him; there’s not enough room to escape.

    “Hanzo, are you hurt?” Jesse asks, still dazed.

    “You are the one who stood in front of a mad ghost with nothing but a pistol!” Hanzo snaps, the surge of anger suddenly purging pain from his body.

    “Hanzo…” Jesse murmurs, running his fingers over scales and tangling them in his whiskers.

    “We need to get you to Lúcio,” Genji says kindly, finally pulling McCree towards the exit. McCree’s face crumples into a scowl. His gaze sweeps over the space around them: the loops of Hanzo’s body, the stone above them, the slim opening and the grim resignation that pervades the Shimada brothers’ unusual faces.

    “Hanzo,” Jesse says, stronger, “how are you getting out?”

    “Go to the medic,” Hanzo says. He tries and fails to not relish the sound of his name in Jesse’s mouth.

    “How are you getting out?” Jesse’s voice hardens, sharpens. His eyes are wild and burn like embers.

    “Is that McCree? Hey, come on man, shake a leg!” Lúcio calls down. McCree snarls at him.

    “We are _not_ leaving him here.”

    “Whoa, nobody said we were,” Lúcio assures him. “Mei and I have a plan, but we need the two of you outta there first, a’ight?”

    The sound that claws its way out of Jesse McCree is unmistakably a growl, but Genji’s grip is stronger than steel.

    “Move before you pass out from blood loss,” he chides as he half-shepherds, half-bullies McCree to safety. “It is a miracle you aren’t dead twice over. Do not court luck in threes.”

    Jesse looks back before he climbs out of the safe nest Hanzo held for him. Hanzo closes his eyes to protect himself from the heat of the man’s stare.

    For a moment, the beast is sated. He lets himself drown in that feeling, lets it push the air from his lungs and the pain from his nerves. McCree is safe, he tells himself. He’s done all he can. The beast saved him. Hanzo saved him.

    He feels numbness creeping in, filling the spaces obstinacy carved out of him moments ago. A lifetime ago. He’s tired of pain. He’s just tired. It takes so much effort to breathe in, and it burns when he does. His heartbeat pounds in his ears, slowing, slowing, slowing…

    “ **Hanzo!** ” Jesse howls, and Hanzo’s eyes snap open to a world of bright white and gold. It’s not his heartbeat on that slow rhythm, it’s the bass line on Lúcio’s music — the melody is a high, almost shrill series of notes that sound like falling snow and nearly vanish in the noise of Mei’s endothermic blaster. She builds towers of ice around and between the loops of his torso. By necessity, the pillars are thick and wide to lift the debris like a makeshift jack so that Hana’s MEKA can destroy or relocate them, but as a result the space around him is practically a freezer.

    Lúcio hits another boost, dialing up the volume and whipping Hanzo’s pulse into a frenzy with the dynamic shift. Genji grapples with McCree, trying to keep Jesse from climbing into the pit and getting in the way. Jesse barely seems to notice his efforts. Sunlight glints off the ice and halos him, rendering him a creature of heat and passion, muscles cording as he strains to try and reach Hanzo.

    Perhaps it is the music, or the light, or the cold. Perhaps it is the exhaustion of maintaining awareness of his every action and constant control of them. Perhaps Hanzo has one moment where he allows himself to simply _want_ and _be wanted_. In truth, it is all of these things folded into a single, sublime stanza.

    Hanzo reaches back for him, human once more.  
  
    Mei screams a little when the dragon disappears and several sheets of stone slide into the vacated space. Her quick reactions with the blaster are all that keep Hanzo from being crushed again.

    Jesse tears out of Genji’s grasp, an easier task since Genji flings himself right alongside the man so they both slide down to Hanzo at the same time. Lúcio amps up his music again, and adrenaline loans temporary strength enough for the three of them to climb back out before Mei’s blaster runs dry.

    “Darling, you gotta stop letting buildings collapse on you,” Jesse says, soft but urgent. “It ain’t good for you, nor my heart, neither.”

    Hanzo’s fingers, still numb with cold, twist in Jesse’s shirt. The man radiates heat like a summer day. Somewhere beyond the periphery of his exhausted and fading awareness, he thinks he hears his young teammates coo as if they’ve seen something cute.

    He can’t bring himself to care. Both beast and man, in perfect agreement, fall into contented unconsciousness against the summer-man beside him.

**Author's Note:**

> Also on tumblr as one of the [Bad Sleep Twins](http://badsleeptwins.tumblr.com/) or by myself as [deliriumexmachina](http://deliriumexmachina.tumblr.com).


End file.
